We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

The Spaceship Next Door

When a spaceship landed in an open field in the quiet mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts, everyone realized humankind was not alone in the universe. With that realization everyone freaked out for a little while. Or almost everyone. The residents of Sorrow Falls took the news pretty well. This could have been due to a certain local quality of unflappability, or it could have been that in three years the ship did exactly nothing other than sit quietly in that field, and nobody understood the full extent of this nothing the ship was doing better than the people who lived right next door.

To the Vanishing Point

It was just a boring drive through the Nevada desert...until the Sonderberg family picked up a beautiful young hitchhiker named Mouse and found themselves on a wild, careening ride down the exit ramp to Hell. It seems the entire universe is doomed unless Mouse, a transdimensional alien, can find and heal the dying cosmic Spinner who controls the very fabric of reality. They're driving into a fantastic nightmare to save all creation at the Vanishing Point on the Cosmic Road...which happens to be US Interstate 40!

In Times Like These

Benjamin Travers has been electrocuted. What's worse, he and his friends have woken up in the past. As the friends search for a way home, they realize they're not alone. There are other time travelers, and some of them are turning up dead.

A Hymn Before Battle: Legacy of the Aldenata

With Earth in the path of the rapacious Posleen, the Galactic Federation offers help to the backward humans - for a price. You can protect yourself from your enemies, but God save you from your allies!

Falling Free

Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: mind your own business, fix what's wrong, and move on to the next job. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat, where a group of humanoids had been secretly, commercially bioengineered for working in free fall. Could he just stand there and allow the exploitation of hundreds of helpless children merely to enhance the bottom line of a heartless mega-corporation?

Terms of Enlistment: Frontlines, Book 1

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you’re restricted to 2,000 calories of badly flavored soy every day. You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth.

The Android's Dream

A human diplomat creates an interstellar incident when he kills an alien diplomat in a most unusual way. To avoid war, Earth's government must find an equally unusual object: A type of sheep ("The Android's Dream"), used in the alien race's coronation ceremony. To find the sheep, the government turns to Harry Creek, ex-cop, war hero and hacker extraordinaire.

Fuzzy Nation

In John Scalzi's re-imagining of H. Beam Piper's 1962 sci-fi classic Little Fuzzy, written with the full cooperation of the Piper Estate, Jack Holloway works alone for reasons he doesnt care to talk about. Hundreds of miles from ZaraCorps headquarters on planet, 178 light-years from the corporations headquarters on Earth, Jack is content as an independent contractor, prospecting and surveying at his own pace. As for his past, thats not up for discussion.

An Unattractive Vampire

After three centuries trapped underground, thousand-year-old Yulric Bile, also known as The Cursed One, The Devil's Apprentice, He Who Worships the Slumbering Horrors, awakens only to find that no one believes he is a vampire. Apparently he's just too ugly. Modern vampires, he soon discovers, are pretty, weak, and, most disturbing of all, good.

Altered Carbon

In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles

Jake Sullivan is a licensed private eye with a seriously hardboiled attitude. He also possesses raw magical talent and the ability to make objects in his vicinity light as a feather or as heavy as depleted uranium, all with a magical thought. It's no wonder the G-men turn to Jake when they need someoneto go after a suspected killer who has been knocking off banks in a magic-enhanced crime spree.

Publisher's Summary

Not so long ago Marcus Walker was just another young commodities trader in Chicago, working hard and playing harder. But that's all in the past, part of a life half forgotten-a reality that vanished when he was attacked while camping and tossed aboard a starship bound for deep space.

Desperately, Walker searches for explanations, only to realize he's trapped in a horrifying nightmare that is all too real. Instead of being a rich hotshot at the top of the food chain, Walker discovers he's just another amusing novelty, part of a cargo of “cute” aliens from primitive planets - destined to be sold as pets to highly advanced populations in “civilized” regions of the galaxy.

Even if he weren't constantly watched by his captors, Walker has few options. After all, there is no escape from a speeding starship. Another man might resign himself to the inevitable and hope to be sold to a kindly owner, but not Walker. This former college football star has plenty of American ingenuity and no intention of admitting defeat, now or ever. In fact, he's only just begun to fight.

"Lost and Found," is classic Foster in many ways. Human nature is brought into sharp relief against the backdrop of a galaxy filled with very non-human creatures. In the process Foster creates a picture that is often (but hardly always) flattering to humans, but this is done with an air of bemusement, as if he takes neither himself nor the rest of us seriously. This novel performs this narrative trick in the context of a story of abduction of an ordinary human and an ordinary dog who manage to be quite a handful for the nasty aliens who have taken them from their homes. It's a clever, amusing story, and it deserves 3.5 stars, but it is often predictable, and, unlike Foster's earlier trilogy, "The Damned," it lacks real tension and excitement. Nevertheless, if you're looking for a fun, easy listen, this is a good choice (but be advised that this is the first book of a trilogy, so the ending leaves loose ends). Reader Oliver Wyman's performance is stellar. His ability to capture the personalities of very strange aliens is uncanny. He actually makes this a book better heard than read.

Oliver Wyman does a terrific job of creating the varied characters of Lost and Found, especially admirable as most of them aren't human. The story itself is fast paced and provides a mix of humor, adventure, and tension that should satisfy most anyone. The only issue, which I hope is short-lived, is that the other two books in this series are not yet available from Audible.

This story is fun and a very light, fun and easy listen.. If you want something to just jump into, this is the book. Of course Oliver Wyman is outstanding. He is great at dividing up his voices to give great sound to each role. I enjoyed listening while I did mundane chores.

My working hypothesis has been that any book from Alan Dean Foster is probably worth at least considering so, when I saw this as the first of a series on sale at Audible I immediately listened to the sample and, after a brief hesitation, bought it.

The book is a delight. Marc Walker is abducted by aliens while on a camping trip and finds himself, along with a lot of other abductees from other planets, on a space ship traveling through space. He doesn’t know their destination nor the reason for the abductions, but plots to escape along with some of his fellow prisoners. While they don’t know where they are, where they will go or how they will escape, anything is better than remaining as a prisoner. The story is pure Alan Dean Foster, the characters are interesting, the writing first class and full of humor. While not exactly a comedy it is a very pleasant listen. However there are two issues for me with this book.

The first is that the narration, while adequate, is far too slow and, to compensate, I had to play it at 1.25x speed on the Audible player to make listening bearable. The second problem seems to me to be more serious. Audible lists this book as the first in a series (and so it is). However the remaining books in the series are not available on Audible and hence it seems somewhat misleading to place the book on sale as the first in a series if you cannot buy the rest of the books through Audible.

If you are willing to live with that restriction this is a good listen. If not, then you might wait until the remaining books are available (if they ever are). Given that the storyline is left hanging at the end of the first book, the ability to buy the remaining books might outweigh how good the first volume is.

What made the experience of listening to Lost and Found the most enjoyable?

Somewhere between a 3 and a 4. This is a light read, perfect to listen to during my walks around the neighborhood but no deep messages and nothing I would recommend for a Hugo.<br/>He sets up some nice opportunities, like the talking dog, but then he does not exploit those opportunities enough to make the book special.<br/>Nevertheless, I definitely would like to read the others in the trilogy and am disappointed that they are not recorded.

What did you like best about this story?

The interactions among the people from various alien cultures.

Which scene was your favorite?

When Walker meets the dog George.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This was a fun and surprising story. It took a while to realize what was really going on in the story and each new chapter threw in a new twist. I kept expecting the story to end in with him waking up from a bad dream. But the characters and actions keep getting stranger and more entertaining as the story went along.

What did you like best about this story?

I really liked the wonderful mixture of characters. They had special personalities that were well presented so they almost seemed possible.

What does Oliver Wyman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I love to make strange noises that mimic animals, birds, and a few cartoon like characters. Wyman makes the strange aliens real with alien voices that give you more personality then I am capable of if I just read the words, even with my imagination.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Laugh of coarse, and surprise and wonder what is going to happen next.

I was expecting to laugh. Based on the descriptions, I thought this would be like a book by John Scalzi. It was not. I did not laugh. I did not care for the characters, and I will not be looking for the last two parts. The narrator did a great job, though: it is easy to know who is talking at any time by the voices he uses.

The part of the book describing the clever activities used by the four heros in getting out of their captivity was my favorite section.

What does Oliver Wyman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The Chicago accents for the dog.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

SPOILER ALERT - Not an extreme reaction, but the ending brought home to me the irony of getting what we want (they wanted to be rescued) only to discover that it isn't much better than what came before (only a different kind of captivity).